Democrats are truly blowing this issue. Joe Lieberman is one of the best true politicians that this country has and his own party wants him to be defeated.

But I guess in the grand scheme of things the Democrats are a bit dizzy with regard to reality.

Replace Rumsfeld and finish out the Cheney/Bush administration’s War OF Terror

Can someone help me understand this fixation about Lieberman? I hate Holy Joe as much as the next guy, but why exactly is he worse than... Hillary Clinton?

What did I miss? Didn't both of them support the war to the hilt, and still do? Didn't both of them go to bed with Bush?

OK, HRC didn't tongue W. Maybe not physically but in any other way she did.

Atrios is completely obsessed about Lieberman, but finds Israel's war "too complex"...
Nice to know one has one's priorities straight.

At least Lieberman isn't threatening to become president. Hillary is. And Biden is, too (that jerk).

Anyone who hates Lieberman but loves Hillary/Biden is a power-hungry, hypocritical buffoon.

Or maybe just an antisemite. (I got that idea from Daniel.)

Thus spake noblesseoblige.

Wait a minute!! What happened to our large tent? Is this the purge we've been denying?

No, his party loves him -- it's the actual voters in CT that are threatening to show him the door.

That's a little different.
Sheila in CT

Is your name Wittman or From in real life?

Do you work for the DLC or Lieberman?

You sure sound like it.

Why the "obsession"?

Here's a few reasons:

1. No-one expected Lieberman to have this fight.

2. 98% of incumbents in this country get re-elected. When a high profile pol - a former VP candidate - hits the skids, it's news.

3. Lamont-Lieberman presents a choice between a type of candidate many Dems (not just CT) want, and a type of candidate Dems have until recently accepted.

4. Lamont-Lieberman is as good a proxy as there is for Howard Dean versus the DLC.

5. The GOP are running a story-line - with full media complicity - that this is the extremists taking over the Dem Party.

6. Lieberman has threatened to leave the party if he loses.

Many ways to look at it, but bottom line is a Lieberman loss will sent every Beltway watcher back to the drawing board. Res ipsa loquitur.

I'll open the book:

Lobbying job: 2/1
Runs as independent: 3/1
Sec State: 6/1
Carlyle Group: 7/1
Sec Def: 8/1
UN Ambassador: 14/1
Social Security privatization cheerleader: 14/1
Iraq Ambassador: 20/1
Veep: 40/1
The official POTUS dog-walker: 1000/1

I'm all in favor of Lieberman for SecDef. I'd much rather have Lieberman than Rumsfeld in the Pentagon, and I'd much rather have Lamont than Lieberman in the Senate.

Lieberman may enable Republicans, go wobbly on Social Security at inopportune moments, and generally be an annoying, moralizing, pandering politician, but he can't possibly be as bad for the country as Rumsfeld. Besides, it would bring a progressive voice into Bush's inner circle, and might even help heal the divisions in this country. And that, ultimately, would be a good thing.

Lieberman makes the perfect replacement for Rummy, from the Republican point of view. First, he's a Democrat. Second, he's a Democrat. Third, everyone knows now the vultures are returning to roost and feast on the remains of Dubya's foreign and defense policies.

Let Lieberman and his type of Democrat defend the debacle hurtling down the road and then take the blame for the aftermath. Why would any self-respecting Republican want to soil themselves trying to right the disasters the SecDef will be dealing with for Dubya's final two years? No political or financial capital will accrue to any Republican who must deal with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Israel, the Palestinian problems, Syria, nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan, and the imminent collapse of the American military and national fiscal position. I won't even go into all of those sweetheart contracts with the likes of Halliburton and Lockheed-Martin which the SecDef will need to break.

What's really sad is that Lieberman appears too dense to appreciate the poisoned chalice the SecDef's job will be. Sometimes wanting to be a Kewl Kid too much can kill you.

Rumsfeld is in for the long haul. To fire Rumsfeld would be to admit a complete failure of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, and Bush is too stubborn to admit this.

Lieberman will be a lobbyist for Big Pharma. After this election, he'll need to hide his increasingly thin skin from the public, but still find a way to immorally fill his pockets as a lobbyist.

So much for his moral streak.

You make sense here. It's just about the the only job in the current administration he could take without burning his bridges with the incoming Democratic administration. Joe would never do anything that killed his future after the 08 election.

Whether Bush would offer it is a different question.

Tom O

"Can someone help me understand this fixation about Lieberman?"

Yes of course. Joe is beatable this year. Hillary is not. Biden is not even on the ballot. You go hunting where the ducks are.

If a credible progressive candidate with a couple hundred million in the bank had challenged Hillary would the progressive netroots have flooded to him or her? I don't know. What I do know is that it didn't happen, that candidate never came to light. Lamont did.

I am neither a hypocritical buffoon or an anti-semite and I don't think the progressive netroots are particularly hypocritical or anti-semitic either. Power hungry is probably fair, as would be practical. But slurs and name calling are not particularly useful here. Nor are aspersions on other people's political motives.

Charges of anti-semitism are being thrown around rather too freely, it is rather like conservatives who love to call liberals traitors, it says a lot more about the name thrower than the quality of his thinking.

Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks. He replied "that is where the money is". Well in this election cycle the bank for progressive democrats is Connecticut and the money is Lierberman's Senate seat.

It's politics not a pogrom, even if the troops do happen to be called Kossacks. Joe of his own free will got on the wrong side of history in the biggest issue facing this country today. And as a result is going to be taken down if we can. That is the source of the fixation, like it or not.

I think it's most likely he'd wind up as a "fellow" someplace advocating Trojan Horse policy solutions like school vouchers or censorship.

One problem with this question is that it assumes that there is some possibility that Rumsfeld will leave. That's not going to happen. This is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration, and Lieberman replacing Rumsfeld is about as likely as Lieberman replacing Bush or Cheney (before 2009).

"If a credible progressive candidate with a couple hundred million in the bank had challenged Hillary would the progressive netroots have flooded to him or her?"

Hillary is not perceived as pro Bush. Lieberman is.

It is unthinkable that Hillary would appear on Sean Hannity and trash Democrats or she would write an op-ed in the WSJ declaring it treasonous to criticize Bush.

Lieberman's problem is not support for the Iraq war. It is his acting as an apologist for Bush on a number of issues. He has forgotten that he is a Dem senator representing the opposition and he has a responsibility to provide oversight.

Lieberman could have played the hawk role without turning himself into Bush's poodle. He could have, and should have, criticized Bush from the right.

If Joe Lieberman loses the primary, it will not be by a very big margin. While the Lamont team has had the stronger ground operation to date, the party leaders and union leaders he has aligned to him are in fact able to mount a get out the vote operation. Now that polls tell them they really need to, they will. And Lieberman's campaign has brought in some people to help with that and they're making a concerted final push to change things.

So the primary will be close. So close that if he loses, it will be too hard for him not to run as an independent. He believes that in a state where the largest voter affiliation is independent that he has a good chance of winning as a third candidate.

He also believes that this is an issue of honor and principle; because of that belief, to save face, he has to run in November if he loses. (We can argue that he's delusional in this belief, but for him to press on in the face of the rejection and anger he's seeing, which has blind-sided him, he has to believe that he's running on principle and for the soul of the party.)

Now if he loses in November --he's not a cinch to win because despite current polls showing him in the lead; he'll lose a lot of support in a post primary loss poll-- what will he do next? I think he'll do an Al Gore. He'll step back for a while and tend his psychic wounds. There's no future in stepping into a role in the last two years of the Bush administration. He wouldn't live that down.

He'll take a break, write a book about loss of civility in politics and/or the shrinking tent of the democratic party.

While he's working on the book, he'll find succor with Imus, and maybe as regular contributor on FoxNews in much the way Susan Estrich turns up over and again for them. He'll be a safe-to-air Democrat the way Alan Colmes is a safe-to-air liberal.

After a year, when his book comes out, he'll try to find a role as sage elder on the national scene, speaking for the need for sanity in politics (using his experience in CT as a cautionary tale), urging democrats back to the DLC path. He'll hope for HRC in the White House and some roll in that administration, maybe as UN Ambassador.

Ron

It has little to do with Connecticut voters and everything to do with the fact that he happens to agree with the president on one or two issues.

Many in the anti-Lieberman crowd pen him as a closet Republican or a Bush cohort. Such abominable statements show the true ignorance of many.

Joe Lieberman is no Republican.

You're forgetting Harold Brown?

Hillary, like her positions on issues or not, doesn't spend her time attacking her fellow Dems.

And if she ever felt the need to do so, she wouldn't do it in an election year.

Lieberman's institutional support will evaporate if he loses the Democratic primary. I have to believe all the unions will endorse Lamont and all the Democratic town committees. Lieberman could fund an Independent campaign but it will increasingly mute his "Lamont is a rich guy" argument to get millions in campaign donations from out of state. Lieberman is toast if he loses the primary. He's going to have the stench of a loser if he can't win the primary and nothing is more repellant in American politics.

I see Lieberman can't pull off the primary win as an 18-year incumbent he's not much of a politician. That doesn't end his career in government but it will end his career as an elected official. There are still plenty of plum jobs Joe Lieberman can get in even a liberal Democratic administration, various cabinet and Ambassador posts.